I want to post a very public thank you to the TenTec service department for
their help in
resolving some problems with a Titan 425 I recently bougtht on EBay. I called
for help
several times, asking for ":whoever is hot on the 425," and was routed to John
in the
service department. John was VERY supportive of my fixing my problems in the
field. He
sent me a reed relay at no charge, and he talked through symptoms and probable
causes
on the phone. When I told him I might have a board that had been modified, he
offered to
send me a used one to try or compare on an exchange/loan basis.
I eventually found several bad transistors and replaced the big vacuum relay.
The amp is
now purring along nicely.
To put this in perspective, Ten Tec probably sold this amplifier about 20 years
ago, and has
probably not touched it since. I bought it on EBay, probably from the original
owner, who
had clearly taken good care of it. What other manufacturer in any industry
would allow a
(very) compentent technician spend a half hour on the phone (spread out over
several
weeks) with a user to fix a 20 year old product that they haven't sold for at
least 10 years?
We all know that support like this is almost non-existent.
BTW -- my 24 year old Omni-A just went out on loan to a member of our ham club
who just
passed his General ticket.
The folks at TenTec clearly understand that the value of their products is tied
to their resale
value and the long term satisfaction of both original and subsequent owners.
Credit Al
Kahn, K4FW, Ten-Tec's founder (and also the founder of Electro-Voice) for this
positive
attitude. That's also the way he ran EV. Although I've never met him (except
once on 40 cw),
Al is one of my heroes.
Jim Brown K9YC
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